I googled it sometime back and could not find a great answer. What I currently do is use the direct select tool to shift pick two corners. Then I drag the box, with the **** option. This has be done separately for the vertical and horizontal.

Do you know if there is a way to fit the box to the text? That is really all I need and could be done in one shot as opposed to going through each element. I probably have hundreds/thousands of these to contend with.

You might explore making a graphic style which adds a new fill with relative extents which could be applied to the text boxes. The only problem I had with this is that it turns the character level fill blank and has to be reapplied. I've also just used the eyedropper to transfer the same kinds of settings from one block of styled text to many others which doesn't require reapplying the base character fill.

That's a stupid reply. I could resize a text box by dragging its handles in CS3, just a few years ago. Now it doesn't behave that way. Though why Adobe would force users to enter text box dimensions in a modal dialog box instead of intuitively grabbing a box handle and stretching is beyond me. Obviously there must be a tool that does this without modifying the text itself.

Not sure what settings you have set in your illustrator prefs, but i'm rockin cs5.1 and for me showing the bounding box enables me to grab the corner handles of the text box with the selection tool (black arrow). and... this does NOT scale the type, it just opends the box up so you can see the rest of the words you are typing.

Here are some screens showing bounding box ON. and the 2nd showing the selection tool resizing the text box without scaling.

I think there's still some misunderstanding. What you're experiencing is the difference between "point type"(text scales w/ the bounding box) and "area type" (text does not scale with the bounding box). Point type and area type have slightly different bounding boxes.

Is it possible to get the bounding box to shrink to the edges of the type, without changing its size? So that I can center the type over an object more easily?

I find it really frustrating that I'll be working on a word, like on a logo, and the box will be wider than the type. Then, of course, if I use any of the alignment buttons to align the text to an object, the alignment is wrong. I've never found a way to shrink the box to the size of the type...

This has been very frustrating for me as well. As a Macromedia Freehand user (before Adobe Illustrator bought Freehand and stopped supporting Freehand), That option in my Illustration program (now Adobe Illustrator) has disappeared. In Freehand I could double click in a small box in the bottom right of the bounding box and the bounding box would snap to fit the size of the text. No more oversized text boxes to clutter up my workspace. Being as Adobe has taken over Freehand I would like to see them incorporate this capability into Illustrator. They own the coding from Freehand now. I think it should be incorporated into the next version of Adobe Illustrator. Any other thoughts?

In case anyone finds this thread and is still looking for the solution, there is a difference between clicking once on the page with the text tool selected and clicking and dragging a text box with the same tool.

(1) Clicking once on the page and then typing creates a block that scales the text when you move a point on the bounding box. You cannot change the size of this block later on without it affecting the scale of the text.

(2) Clicking and dragging to make a rectangular text block gives you a text box that you can resize without scaling the text – resulting in reflowed text. You cannot scale the text contained in this block later on using the bounding box handles though – you will have to perform scaling numerically and / or using the scale tool. Remember to position the anchor point in the top left when scale while maintaining position or else the text will scale from the centre outwards.

The answer to the original question is therefore: Click and drag a text block if you want to be able to change the size and shape of the block using the bounding box later on.